Sunped students bear the brunt of caste discrimination

The Sunped village in Faridabad district, located 40 kilometres away from the main Delhi city, has been exposed for its social and economical discriminatory nature right down to its grass root level. 

The village which had recently been in the news for the hideous crime that saw two Dalit kids burned alive, has been facing clear community distinction not only at social but also at educational levels.

The village has a single government school in the area that all the children of the village attend, irrespective of any community. But the discrimination arose when the upper caste families decided to send their children to private schools while the Dalit families sent their children to the government school.

The population figures show that there are 300 Rajput families and 100 Dalit families in Sunped. But the government school sees a higher enrollment of Dalit students. 

“The reason behind such a division was observed as the upper caste families preferred sending their kids to private schools. Even though the two private schools- PR Memorial and Green Fields School are far away from the main village, but still the Rajput kids are not enrolled in the government school which is situated right in the centre of the village,” said Dharamveer Sharma, Sanskrit teacher at the government school.

The government school has three teachers for five subjects and lacks a Headmaster/mistress to run it. The government school records an intake of 137 SC students out of a total 187 students. This shows that 73 per cent of the students in a government school belong to the Dalit families. The same statistic prevails in the private schools, where 70-75 per cent of the children are from Rajput and Thakur communities.

The government school also witnessed heavy fallout of students immediately after the two Dalit kids were burnt alive in a suspected inter-caste violence incident that happened in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. The school has also witnessed yearly fallout of children from 221 in 2014 to 187 in 2015.